Oregon turns over its Obamacare exchange to the feds

By Russ Britt

The board overseeing Oregon’s health insurance exchange made it official Friday and formally decided to dismantle its own operation in favor of having the state’s Obamacare clearinghouse run by the federal government, reports said.

Cover Oregon

The Washington Post reported the Cover Oregon board made the decision to drop the site, which was built with the help of $305 million in federal grants. Although Oregon supported the Affordable Care Act enough to set up one of the first exchanges in the country, it could never work out technical bugs that prevented customers from fully enrolling on the website.

The Associated Press reported that Cover Oregon will pay $4 million to $6 million to shift over to HealthCare.gov instead of spending an estimated $78 million to get its own website running. Oregon paid Oracle Corp.
/quotes/zigman/19452757/delayed/quotes/nls/orclORCL $134 million to build the exchange, but up to now consumers that have signed up have done so with the aid of phone helpers and paper applications, along with some online procedures.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is calling on Oregon to pay the federal government back the money spent on the failed exchange, the Post said.

Cover Oregon officials are expected to meet with officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services next week to discuss the transfer.

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